Spam on my blog...

Looks like a few more spam messages, and I'll simply remove the ability for commenting on my blog :(

Some idiot bot has been hitting my lawmmowers and free software page with the most annoying blog spam. I don't know what key words on there (besides the obvious) rank it high enough on google, but there it is. Sad that freedom is so often abused to do stupid things...

Microsoft takes aim at it's own Navel again!

See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4382112.stm . But I gotta question -- just how many times does some dopey member of the press have to parrot an executive's navel gazing? Don't even bother reading the article, Microsoft doesn't have a chance of unseating Google. They regularly report that they're going to do this, and regularly reality comes back and bites them in the kajones -- Microsoft may as well announce that they're going to get the sun to set in the East.

What about the supposedly objective, unbiased press in this context?

And this is the BBC. Give me a frickin' break. This is a thinly veiled press release, and shouldn't be posted as news anywhere. At best, it should be referenced in the "smoke" section on Microsoft's own web site, then at least we'd be able to categorize it for what it is.

Not that I'm opinionated on the subject, or anything ;)
--FeriCyde

Dilbert newsletter is in

If you don't get this, you're missing out. My favorite part this time was the section on Scott Adams having a blog:

The blogger's philosophy goes something like this:
Everything that I think about is more 
fascinating than the crap in your head. 

Get the newsletter here.

Microsoft Media Bias...

I've decided to speak to John Dvoraks concerns about supposed anti-Microsoft media bias. This should be interesting. I'll post the link here. Here's a snippet from what's coming:

• The difference is that mine is overt, like a lot of bloggers, I honestly think that putting on some kind of journalistic priestly garb of pretend "non-bias" is a sham and I won't be a part of it. The alternative is to drink the Kool-Aid and believe that the media is somehow going to police itself and truly report the facts in all cases, not being persuaded to run marketing material as content, stories for hire and the rest of the crap that we all know by now is going on here and there to support huge corporate interests.

--FeriCyde

Dvorak strikes again with his usual ...

Wishwashyness.

Not even going to provide the link. One day he's pointing out the conflict of interest that Microsoft's new anti-virus software is providing -- next day he's claiming that there's a pro-Apple media bias since most media people supposedly use Macs.

What bullcrap. The media, if it's pro-anything, is pro-dollars. That means that it hasn't now and anytime in the foreseeable future, ever going to get the Microsoft story straight. The story that's not being told? That Microsoft's software, at one of our most precariously balanced times in history, has left Millions of American households in the most insecure states imaginable.

That PCs have become insecurable -- even by tech experts like Dvorak (he readily admits getting viruses in the first example that I'm not linking to), there's an untold story.

If they were doing their jobs, and not so afraid of losing Microsoft advertising dollars (They being editors, ad sales staff and the people controlling the company purse strings at the top) -- they might allow the truth to be broadcast.

And the truth is that Microsoft's products are woefully inadequate from a security perspective for your average user today. That story should be broadcast over and over until we see a digitally diverse landscape (Imagine something like 30% Apple, 20% Linux, 40% Microsoft and the remainder something new -- hard to imagine, isn't it). Until then, we're screwed.

So much for media balance. As for it being pro-Apple, Dvorak, please share those mushrooms next time.
--FeriCyde

It's been 6 years plus...

But the war is still on:

see The War(II), my latest rewrite of an article I posted to LinuxToday.com in July of 1999. I didn't realize then what a special place LinuxToday had become in my life. Today, LinuxToday is more of a corporate focused news site, while LXer.com has become the community replacement for that original site. I urge you to check both sources daily if you're interested in finding out what's going on.

The Post Linux-Fest blues...

Oh man, was Ohio Linux Fest a blast (see http://ohiolinux.org for more). I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people, geeked out to the max with my buddies -- it doesn't get much better than that. Thanks have to go to Chris Schwark for putting me up for the night.

Life is crazy. DinoTrac and I are at it again on LXer.com, with our Penguin/Counter/Penguin forum. This one is about multiple distributions and the fact that every so often, the trade press treats our open operating system society as some kind of disease out of control -- rather than what it truly is: a free market of ideas. Something that the technical world has never seen at this scale.

Look forward to more LXer.com stuff from me -- it's become more than a news site to me.